Communication

Methods of communication have advanced greatly over the last couple hundred years. Even over the past 100 years technology and communication has exponentially advanced and become much easier. We have come from waiting months for a letter to make it across the Atlantic Ocean from New York to Paris to sending a text message in mere seconds asking "wanna get dinner 2nite?" Methods of communication that send messages in seconds are extremely useful for a variety of reasons, such as creating plans with friends, contacting loved ones across the world, or sharing photos of your experiences.

However, this convenience comes with a cost. The quick nature of communication has created a shortened attention span in the population, as people are expecting an instantaneous response to a text message or a missed call. People are so easily connected to their friends across the world that it seems that connecting with our friends from across the table has become difficult. The world is simultaneously connected and disconnected, as one would rather send a text to a friend in California and FaceTime them for hours than meet up with your friend in your dorm to study for your next exam.

In short, people need to find a balance between physical, face-to-face contact and long range, electronic contact. If it is easier to send a text to meet up for dinner, go ahead and do that, and once you meet up with your friend, talk to them instead of sending texts to your other friends. Nowadays, people have become so used to text messages that it is now an odd action to talk on the phone, which is in fact what the cell phone's primary use is. By looking down at our phones we are missing the people behind the text messages. The movie "Ready Player One" showed this problem very well, as people would rather live in the fictional world than the real one since they are someone else that they don't want to be in the fictional world. However, the real world is all we have, so we have to live in it and talk to the people who also live in it in order to get the most out of life.

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